That Moment Your Childhood Soul Is Crushed Upon Discovering People Hated 'Police Academy'

Mahoney was my definition of a real American hero – a guy who could crack jokes, get the girl, and save the day. The curmudgeonly Lt. Harris made for the perfect scoundrel, like a more ill-willed Mr. Wilson. So many other great misfits with badges filled the screen: the human sound machine Larvell Jones, the gentle giant Hightower, the comically unstable Tackleberry, the mouse-voiced Laverne Hooks, the list goes on.

And then there was that blonde bombshell Sgt. Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook). Never before had I been so intimidated by a woman, yet simultaneously so turned on by one.

Of course, I was only 8.

That was about the age I discovered the “Police Academy” series, along with my older brother and “Irish twin,” who could at least claim double digits being 17 months my elder. The original movie, which celebrates its 30th anniversary Sunday, was the first R-rated movie we saw.

By this time – let’s say it was 1987 – there were already three “Police Academy” movies on “home video” (a term that, back then, you could take literally) and a fourth installment in theaters. I assume since the sequels were PG-13, maybe our parents didn’t realize the first one was an R-rated movie that ends on a famous fellatio gag. I don’t think we “got” this joke at the time.

We became such junkies addicted to the comedic misadventures of Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg) and company that we had the “original trilogy” on VHS cassette tapes, recorded from cable (with commercials and everything), and binge-watched them with regularity.

In our pre-teen minds, we regarded them (all) as bona fide American classics. I made a jarring, soul-crushing discovery recently, though.

For a reason I can’t quite recall, I turned to Rotten Tomatoes, the ol’ reliable review aggregator, to see which installment in this classic series was regarded as its finest entry. Was it the 1984 granddaddy? Or maybe “Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment,” which introduced the gut-busting gibberish-spewing Zed? Or maybe it was Part 4, Mahoney’s swan song that introduced a new class, including a young David Spade?

As it turns out, the critics hated the “Police Academy” movies. Like, really, really, hated them.

The late, great Roger Ebert gave the first “Police Academy” zero stars and argued, “It’s so bad, maybe you should pool your money and draw straws and send one of the guys off to rent it so that in the future, whenever you think you’re sitting through a bad comedy, he could shake his head, and chuckle tolerantly, and explain that you don’t know what bad is.”

Ouch.

The movie currently scores a measly 44 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But that’s nothing compared to how reviled the sequels were, which were released on an annual basis for six consecutive years (for some reason it took them five years to produce the seventh installment, “Mission to Moscow”; travel Visas maybe?).

Leonard Maltin gave all but the first and third movies the bomb rating, which means he’d rather see this movies explode into a carnage-filled, fiery mess than grant them a single star.

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"Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment" has a lowly approval score of 23 percent. “Police Academy 3: Back in Training,” the only sequel Leonard Maltin didn’t want to detonate until there was not a shred of it left, shot all the way up to 40 percent.

But then it gets even uglier: Parts 4, 5 (“Assignment: Miami Beach”), 6 (“City Under Siege”) and 7 all registered 0 percent approval ratings. That’s right, there is not a single positive review on the internet for any of the last four “Police Academy” movies. (Granted, even my brother and I recognized the series had jumped the shark by the time “Moscow” rolled around; of course, we were five years the wiser; and who did they think they were, Rocky?)

But how could this be? Or better yet, as someone who writes about movies for a living, how could I be so naïve to the hatred that surrounds one of the most beloved film institutions of my childhood? Was I in denial? Did it just never come up in conversations with other movie journos? And if it was so bad, how did it produce so many sequels? Okay, forget that last point, I just remembered how Hollywood works — it made money.

Strangely enough, though, while the first “Police Academy” cleaned up at the box with a haul of $81 million, the following five films would not even double that combined, earning $150 million in total, or, on average, about $30 million apiece. Still, no small potatoes.

One thing I do know is that I had never revisited the “Police Academy” movies. Our routinely taped-over and re-stickered VHS cassettes were long gone – or at least buried in a basement somewhere, next to G.I. Joe figures and baseball cards – and I must’ve missed the release of the box set.

And I will say that “Police Academy (1)” is still pretty good today.

I wouldn’t put its slapstick effect quite up there with “Airplane!” and “Caddyshack,” but it’s not monstrously far behind. It’s a true screwball comedy, in the literal sense of the word, much moreseo than anything starring Cary Grant and a tiger. It still lands some huge laughs.

Sure, it seems cheesy and dated, as most awesomely ’80s movies do.

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It didn’t present the most enlightened view of the LGBT lifestyle, either, as represented by the recurring Blue Oyster gags, which equated gay bars with being traumatically forced to slow dance with leather-clad bears straight out of a Village People video. But rarely do any ’80s movies you look back on.

I’ll always appreciate “Police Academy” for the life lessons that it taught me as a preteen (and also very likely for the first female nudity I saw in my life – that has educational value, too). Like, for instance, it taught us that anyone could join the police force, despite height, weight, sex, race, education, or physical strength (or social awkwardness… am I right, Tackleberry?).

It was comforting to know that if my aspirational career as a millionaire professional athlete or famous movie star didn’t pan out, the police academy looked like a riot. And you’d get to squash a lot of riots, so that’s pretty rad, too. (Speaking of rad, don’t get my 8-year-old self started about how phenomenal the 1987 BMX-racing film “Rad” was.)

The “Police Academy” movies also taught me such key phrases as “dirtbag,” “scumbucket,” “butt-breath,” “d**khead,” and “rat face,” but I think my mother would agree those terms have been less valuable as I’ve become an adult.

So continue to hate on “Cops on Patrol” all you want. I’ll be a “Police Academy” admirer for life.

Just don’t tell me critics hated "Hot to Trot," too.

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